wallwalker | Weight Issues Update

Discussion of weight issues. I'm trying to be positive, at least. Also there are numbers.

I haven't been thinking of my weight lately. I'd been lifting for a while, but I stopped because I was sick of being sore all the time; I haven't even touched Fitocracy for ages. I should probably just accept that it makes me too obsessive about things, and let it go.

I'm still not thinking of my weight, particularly, but I am attempting to think of my body fat percent. I have a scale that measures it, and I know that those are often inaccurate, but I'm sure that 44% is still way too high. (The particular mix of medication that I'm currently taking probably does not help.) So I'm lifting weights again - we'll see how well I can stick to the plan, which is basically make sure I work the major muscle groups at least twice a week for now, and see how I feel as I get used to the pain. And I have a (cheap, old but still working) exercise bike I ride while I'm playing games, which motivates me both to ride the bike and to finish some of my backlog of games. It's working so far. (I know that I'm prone to overexercising - I used to ride a very similar old exercise bike back in high school for four hours a day, at times - but I think I'll be okay. It's not like I have that much time to waste, anymore. ;p)

I'm sure I'd be making more progress if I wasn't currently so addicted to sweets, especially soda. Why is giving it up so hard? I can't go through half a day without craving something sweet, to the point that I have to fight myself to not go out and get sometimes. Most of the time, I lose. I can't afford it, I know it damages my health (I don't want to judge anyone else's soda consumption, but for me, it's just a bad idea.) It should be an easy choice for me, but it's not.
(I am seriously considering not having cash or credit/debit cards with me when I go out to work. I'm trying to decide whether or not that's too dangerous to try - but if I take money with me, I usually end up wasting it, and if I don't have the money with me, I won't. And I don't have any money I can afford to waste anymore. Maybe it's time to try it.)

I wish I could find out my exact basal metabolism. It'd be nice to know how many calories I'm burning a day, and whether or not I might be able to do something about it. If there is such a treatment, though, it's probably really expensive.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

eh, I am fine with judging people's soda consumption. That shit is bad for people. So are an awful lot of other things, many of which I indulge in, but one of the shittier aspects of sugary drinks is that our bodies just don't notice liquid calories, so unlike solid treats we have no way to instinctively moderate them.

My husband quit soda recently, after years of trying. He laid in a lot of his favourite bottled water and used a bunch of different kinds of low-calorie dissoluble tea granules to make the transition. He's since stopped bothering with the tea granules and just drinks water. I don't do sugary drinks at all myself (stopped during college to save money, never started again) but I am pretty damn bad about sweet treats. I DO find that the sugar craving goes away if I deliberately try to avoid it for a while but when I'm not on track for that, I keep sweet treats around that aren't going to do me much harm - dark chocolate I can just have a little square or two of, tictacs and sugar-free sours, raisins and fresh fruit.

There's a pretty good BMR calculator here.

also, excellent doctor blogger Yoni Friedhoff wrote an article about ignoring body fat percentage scales. YMMV.

It's an interesting article. And I did know that body fat measurements on scales can be very inaccurate. The number just isn't changing no matter what I do, which isn't doing much for my motivation. It was much the same when I wasn't exercising at all than it was when I was lifting weights and dancing regularly.

I have a lot of friends (on FB, mostly) that will go on and on about how both soda and bottled water is evil, if at least for different reasons. My attitude is, if having bottled water means that someone will actually drink water, then there is absolutely nothing evil about it. I've never had much luck with keeping up with reusable bottles, and I usually reuse bottled water bottles anyway, so I don't see the problem.
The point of that to this discussion, I suppose, is that I don't want to be one of those annoying people who go on and on about how evil soda is. But I can at least acknowledge that it's bad for me, and move on.

...the last time I got fresh fruit, half of it went bad because I forgot I had it. :/ It was grapes, too. I love grapes! I'm just no good at using produce in a timely manner.

I do think that maybe I should just make an effort to give up sweets entirely, except maybe for fruit. Maybe that would get me used to not having them. I get really cranky when I don't have them and want them, though. I would have to warn my SO.

My attitude is, if having bottled water means that someone will actually drink water, then there is absolutely nothing evil about it.

Yeah, that. I am NOT a fan of bottled water, but one really has to take these things one step at a time and bottled water can be a huge step in the right direction.

Augh, I can't do fresh fruit all by myself for that reason - fortunately M eats it pretty voraciously, plus encourages me to include it in evening meals. I did pretty much quit sweets for a while last year, but what I got from that long-term was both how to moderate them, and that I could moderate them - if I had my house in order in other respects, sweet things didn't have to be a dietary sin, and there were equally calorific things I'd much sooner relegate to rarely-ever status (eg. alcohol and grains).

Can you abide diet soda? That was what I did - when I gained a lot of weight right out of college, I said to myself, "self, you can have diet soda or you can have no soda at all, but you can't have regular." It worked - it still tasted sweet enough to soothe the craving. Although of course diet sodas have their own issues (but my consumption of them is limited to no more than two a day, and that only rarely.) FWIW, my experience has been that diet Pepsi and diet Coke taste like rancid ass, but Coke Zero is decently palatable and fruit sodas (cherry 7Up, orange, Dr Pepper in various incarnations) have way less noticeable of a difference in taste with diet v regular compared to plain Pepsi or Coke.

Another thing I do is drink tons of tea, which also may or may not work for you (I can stand to put Splenda in iced tea, though it doesn't taste as good as real sugar, but that is the deal I made with myself. I can either have Splenda sweet tea or no sweet tea at all.)

I've found that I have to have extra sweetener in tea to deal with the bitterness, and as for diet sweetener, unfortunately none of it is palatable for me anymore. I used to drink a ton of it, which might be why. I drank it in high school to the point of sometimes making myself sick.

I may just need to try to quit it entirely again. I managed that once, a while back, and I was thinner than I'd been in a long time. (I'll need to brace myself for the caffeine withdrawal, though.)

I also have the soda problem; and while I am a pretty slight person I am starting to get to the age where it's gonna catch up to me (and judging by the increase in things I've had to remove from my wardrobe... it has begun). I blame the fact that I am at a computer all day, have access to free drinks at work, and have had an ulcer so I can't diet soda at all (like artificial sweetener chews through my stomach lining like no other). Thankfully I can keep it down to one a day or less, unlike when I was in undergrad and would go through a cube of canned soda in like... a week.

Of course, that's really the ONLY sweet thing I ever crave. My biggest problem is I crave salt and have a family with a history of heart problems! GREAT IDEA CENDRI.

But yeah after this internship I'm going to go off soda again I think because I won't be able to afford it. XD Thankfully I have a ridiculous collection of teas and a couple large containers with which to ice them for the colder days.

I hope it goes better, just wanted to pass you some empathy.

I didn't really have a problem with soda again until recently, when I moved in with my SO - his problem is that he needs as many calories as he can get, so he's always drinking soda. I've been trying to push him over towards other forms of liquid calories - he's underweight, so he needs them - that don't involve so many simple sugars. The problem is finding something that isn't heavily based around milk, since he's lactose-intolerant, or soy protein, because we suspect he has a soy allergy.
The point is that there's always soda around, so I generally end up drinking some of it. And I can't do what I'd normally do and throw it out, because it's not mine.

Ouch on the salt thing. I sympathize. ^^; Thanks for the empathy.

Weight Issues Update

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject